Probably they would not have seen Ramon Ynga at all, but for the llamas. There was enough else to look at. The overpowering walls of the mountains on both sides seemed to turn the eyes, even as they turned the foaming Rimac, into a channel from which there was no escape. Up at the end of the cleft was such a sight as no man can long hold his eyes from—the black peak of Chin-chán, bent down with its load of eternal winter. There is something awful about the snow that never melts—the great blank fields, the wrinkled glaciers, the savage ice cornices, the black rocks that peer out hopelessly here and there. It is so different from the friendly white we know and welcome for its sleigh rides and coastings, its snow men and snow-ballings.
It was far up the summit of the Peruvian cordillera, at the very foot of the last wild peaks that stand 18,000 feet in the sky.Where the panting mules trudged, 3,000 feet below the peaks, was low, green herbage; and 500 feet lower yet the little torrent, white as its mother snows, roared and chuckled alternately to the uneven wind. But up yonder all was so white and still; their eyes kept lifting up to it, forgetful of the dangerous trail—the mules could take care of that. They, poor brutes, seemed ill at ease. They breathed in short, loud gasps; and every forty feet or so they stopped and rested for a few moments, unmindful of the spur. Then, when they were ready, they started up again of their own accord, sighing heavily. They would not last much longer, at this rate.
“I think I’ll get off and walk awhile,” said the younger of the two, a bronzed, sinewy man of twenty-five. “It spoils even this scenery for me, to see the suffering of the mules. One wouldn’t think they’d play out so, on such a good trail.”
“It is not the grade,” remarked the Professor, quietly, “as perhaps you will learn.Iam sorry for the mules, too; but it is better to risk them than something more important.”
“Why, you speak as though there were some danger about it!” said the younger man, who was now striding sturdily along,leaving his animal to follow. Many a time he had climbed Pike’s Peak and its brother giants of Colorado, and once had stood on the cone of Popocatépetl. A peak was nothing to him; and as for this excellent path—pooh! It was mere child’s play.
The Professor watched him without a word, but with an expression half quizzical, half grave. After a hundred yards he spoke:
“You don’t seem quite so springy, Barton. I never sawyouheavy-footed before.”
“Well, the truth is, Professor,” gasped Barton, rather shamefacedly, “I feel most remarkably queer. My knees ache as they never did before—though I wouldn’t mind that so much. But I cannot seem to breathe well. Here my heart and lungs are pounding away, as if I’d been sprinting for the 220-yard record! It’s enough to make a man ashamed of himself.”
“No cause at all for shame, my dear boy; you are simply learning what everyone has to learn who tempts great altitudes. Now get on your mule.”
“No, I’ll wear this thing off!” cried the athlete, impatiently. “I’m no puny boy, to give up just because I feel a little wrong. I’ll just keep at it, and beat it yet!”
“Barton,” said the older man, in a tone his companion had never heard him use before, “you get on that mule, and let us have no more nonsense. I like your pluck; and it is because you have more real ‘sand’ (as they say in our West) than any young man I know, that I picked you out for this journey. But courage is a dangerous thing unless you mix it with brains. You must learn that there are some things pluck cannot overcome—and this is one of them. Mount, then!”
Barton obeyed with rather an ill grace, and promptly got angrier with himself at realizing what a relief it was to be perched again in the ridiculously comfortable Peruvian saddle. He could not get over a feeling of shame that the muscles which had borne the cruelest tests of the frontier should now have “played the baby,” as he put it; and he rode on somewhat sulkily.
It was here that Ramon Ynga stumbled into their lives; and, as I have said, all by the doing of the llamas. As the travelers rounded a sharp turn in the trail the mules stopped suddenly almost face to face with the two strangest animals that Barton had ever seen. Shabby, grotesque figures they were, with splay feet, long, awkward legs, and bodies looking like long tussocks of drygrass. But their necks were the worst—tall and ungainly as stovepipes covered with hair. Their backs were hardly so high as those of the under-sized mules; but on these unspeakable necks their heads were quite on a level with Barton’s. Andsuchheads! They were disproportionately small and ludicrously narrow, with pointed ears, malignant little faces, and lips wickedly drawn back.
“Why, I never saw anything, except a rattlesnake, look so vindictive!” cried Barton. “What on earth are they?”
“That is the national bird of Peru,” replied the Professor roguishly. “We are apt to see many up here. In fact, if we had had any daylight in Casapalca you would have noticed many hundreds of them; for they bring all the ore to the stamp mills, and do most of the freighting besides. Lower than 10,000 feet you will hardly ever find them; the llama[13]is a mountain animal, and soon dies if taken to the coast.”
“So that is the llama! But I thought that was called the ‘Peruvian sheep;’ and these look no more like sheep than my mule does.”
“It got that foolish name from the closet naturalists. No one who ever saw a llamacould fail to recognize it for a camel—smaller and longer-haired than the Eastern beast, and without a hump; but a true camel.”
“It’s a funny-looking brute,” laughed Barton. “It seems to put in its time thinking what a grudge it has against everybody. Hi! Get out of the way, you standing grievances!”
The Professor and the young frontiersman had thus far enjoyed the pause of the mules; but now the need of pushing on recurred to their minds, and Barton’s exclamation was meant as a signal for advance. But the llamas stood stolidly, blocking the trail. He drummed his spurs against his mule; whereat the animal took two steps forward and stopped, bracing back, unmindful of the rowels. The llamas did not take a step. Only they seemed to drop their bodies a little, upon those long legs.
“Why, they’re not such fools as they look!” cried Barton, whose sharp eye understood the trifling motion. “See! They are going to give us the edge!”
The trail was two feet wide—an endless thread of a shelf hewn along the mountain wall. On the right, the great, dark slope ran up to the very clouds; on the left, onecould snap a pebble into the white torrent, 500 feet below.
“I have heard that they always take the wall,” the Professor rejoined, “and that when two llama trains meet on one of these trails it is almost impossible to make a passing. Sometimes they even shove each other off the cliff.”
“I guess we’d better not force the right of way—a tumble into the Rimac there is more than I care for!” And Barton jumped from his mule and advanced upon the blockaders, waving his arms threateningly.
“Look out!” cried the Professor; but before the words were fairly off his tongue, the foremost llama opened its ugly mouth and spat at Barton in fury. At this unpleasant salutation he retreated hastily.
“That is their weapon of defense,” said the Professor. “And their saliva is wonderfully acrid. It’s as well you didn’t get it in the face. But I wish theywouldget out of the way—we have no time to spare.”
Just then there was another surprise. A figure hardly less remarkable than the camels slid down from the overhanging hillside, and stood in the path, looking at the startled travelers. It was a dwarfish creature, not four feet tall, with a large, round head, a broad, strong body, and veryshort legs, peculiarly bundled up in unfamiliar clothes. A boy—what in the world was he doing on that impossible slope? What a goat he must be!
“Hulloa!” cried Barton, as soon as he could find a voice.
“God give you good day, sirs,” answered the lad gravely, in thick Spanish. “Wait me so-little, and I will get you by.”
With this he called “U-pa!” to the llamas, lifting his finger as if to point them up the trail. Ordinarily they would have obeyed; but the aggressive manner of Barton had roused their obstinacy, and they did not budge. The boy put his shoulder to the ribs of one, and heaved hard, but the brute stood its ground.
“Well, it is to wait!” said he; and ran about the path, gathering up very small pebbles until his shabby hat was full. Then he sat down on a boulder that jutted from the bank, settling himself as if for a long rest, and threw a mild and measured pebble at each llama. They turned their heads a little and wrinkled their disagreeable noses. He waited a moment and then pitched two more pebbles—which had the same effect. So he sat, slowly and mechanically tossing his harmless missiles upon the dense hair of his charges. Evidently hewas in no hurry; and the two travelers, impatient as they were, had too much wisdom of experience to try to push him. They sat quietly in their saddles, watching the droll scene. It was very ridiculous to need deliverance from two stupid beasts, and to get it from such an owlish little tatterdemalion. His ragged clothing was of very thick, coarse cloth; and upon his feet were the clumsyyanquis, or rawhide sandals of mountain Peru, and he wore thick stockings rising to his knees. Over his trousers was a curious garment, half apron and half leggings; and oversleeves of the same material, hung with a cord about his neck, came up over the elbows of his coat. These two garments were knit in very strange patterns, amid which were square, brown llamas wandering up and down a gray background. Around his waist was a woven belt, now very old, but of beautiful colors and workmanship. And his face—what a brown, round riddle!
“How do you call yourself, friend?” asked the Professor in Spanish. “And have you ten years or a hundred?”
“Ramon Ynga, señor. And the other I do not know. I have been here a long time—ever since they built the mill at Casapalca.”
“You must be about fifteen, then. And where do you live?”
“There, above,” answered Ramon, tossing another pebble.
“A curious habit of the mountaineers,” said the Professor. “These Indians, instead of living in the valleys, climb to the very tops of these peaks, and build there their squalid stone hovels. They seem to think nothing of the eternal clambering up and down.”
An hour crawled by, and the stones in Ramon’s hat were running low. Suddenly the brown llama turned with a snort of disgust, and strode off up the trail. The white one hesitated a moment, snorted, and followed. “That way they get tired, sirs,” said the boy, emptying his hat and pulling it down upon his thatch of black hair.
“I’d take a good club to them!” growled Barton, who had great confidence in the Saxon way of forcing things.
“No, the boy is quite right. It is another case wherein you must not try to be smarter than nature. The llama is the stubbornest brute alive—a mule is vacillating compared to him. If you put a pound too much on his load, he will lie down, and you might beat him to death or build a fire beside him, but he would not get up. Nobody but a PeruvianIndian can do anything with a Peruvian camel, and Ramon has just shown us the proper tactics. Hurt the animal, and he only grows more sullen; but the pebbles merely tease him until he can bear it no longer. And really he repays patience; for he is the only animal that can work effectively at these altitudes, where horses and mules are practically useless. Butadelante! (forward!)”
“Is your Excellency going to Cerro de Pasco?” asked the little Peruvian, running alongside the mule and looking up at the Professor with unusual animation in his non-committal face. He had never spoken with “Yankees” before, and indeed for any stranger to notice him kindly was a new experience. He liked these pale men; and a dim little wish to please them warmed in his heart. That big young man—why, he was taller than any Serrano in the cordillera!—was good. Ramon had seen money a few times; but that round, shinysol,[14]which the stranger had tossed him when the llamas moved, was the first he had ever held in his hand; and it was almost a worry to be so rich! But the other man, with a little gray above his ears, who only looked at himso, and spoke as if he knewhim—he, surely, was very great; and it was to him that the ragged boy had said “Exceléncia.” His face was kindly; and there were little smiles at the edges of his mouth, though he did not laugh.
“No,hijito(little son),” he answered, “we are not bound to the mines. We are going to climb the Chin-chán, to look at the ice cornices and to measure them.”
Even Ramon looked astonished at this. If a Serrano had said it, every one would know he was crazy. Or if it were the young man—well, what could you expect of one who would give away a wholesol? But this one—whateverhedid, it must be right. He certainly was not crazy. Still——
“But the Soroche, your Excellency,” ventured the boy. “For all strangers have it; and many die, even in crossing the slope. Only we who were born here can go so high.”
“We have to go, my boy; for I must look at the snow fields and the cliffs of ice, and measure them,” said the Professor, kindly. “I know well of the mountain sickness, and we will be very careful. Besides, we are both very strong.”
THE HOME OF THE SOROCHE
THE HOME OF THE SOROCHE
“It is not always of the strong,” persisted Ramon. “Sometimes the sick cross in safety, and those who are very large andred—even larger than your Excellency’s friend—fall suddenly and never rise again; for the Soroche is stronger than any.”
“You are quite right, my wise friend. It is terrible. But all do not fall victims, and we must brave it.”
“At the least, Excellency, let me go also! For I know these hills very well, and perhaps I could help. As for the llamas, my brother Sancho comes even yonder, and he will herd them.”
“You won’t really take the little rat up there, will you, Professor?” broke in Barton. “It would be the death of him.”
“M-m! I only hope we may be as safe as I know he will be!Está bien, my boy!Vamos!”[15]
At nine the next morning the three were entering the edge of the snow fields. They had camped for the night in a deserted hovel at the head of the valley; and there the mules could be seen grazing, pulling as far down bill as their ropes would allow. The hut was not a mile behind; but the travelers had been ever since daylight coming thus far. The Professor looked old; and Barton’s big chest was heaving violently. As for Ramon, he clambered alongsteadily and soberly, stopping only when he saw the others had stopped.
By noon they were at the foot of the last ridge, in a great rounding bay flanked by two spurs of the upper peak. The curving rim far overhead was a savage cliff of eternal ice—a cliff of 1,500 feet sheer. At the top a great white brow projected many yards, overhanging the bluish precipice.
“It is—a—noble—cornice,” gasped the Professor, as they sank upon the snow to rest for the hundredth time since morning. “But I fear—we—made—a mistake. We—should—not have—tried this—without—waiting a—few weeks—in Casa—palca—to get—acclimated.”
“It’s awful!” groaned Barton. “My head—feels—as if—it would—burst. But I’ll be hanged—if I—give up!” And the resolute young man fairly snatched himself to erectness, and started toward the spur. But with the third step his tall form swung half around, and swayed an instant, and fell as a dead pine falls in the wind, and lay heavily upon the snow. His face was black; and a bright red stream trickled from each nostril as the Professor sank on his knees beside him, crying huskily, “My—poor boy! I have—killed—you!”
The Professor’s face had a strange look, too. His eyes were very red and swollen—but that was from the merciless glare of the snow—and in his cheeks a gray shadow seemed to be struggling with the unnatural purple. And he was so unlike the Professor of yesterday. He seemed so dull; even stupid!
“Come, Excellency!” Ramon was shouting in his ear. “It is the Soroche, the mountain sickness, and none can fight it. We must be gone from here, else very soon you are both dead. Come!” The small brown fist was tugging at the old man’s shoulder, and in the quaint, boyish voice was a strange thrill. The Professor understood. Dazed as he was, the way in which Ramon said that one word “Come” roused and cheered him like the far bugle call which tells of reinforcements to the besieged. He was not alone. Here was help—the help of a dwarfed Indian boy of fifteen! But that is often the very sort we need—not muscle so much as the elbow-touch of a staunch heart.
“But—Barton?” said the Professor. He could no longer think clearly; and instinctively he turned to Ramon as superior. “Barton? We—cannot—leave—Barton!”The Serrano lad looked at the prostrate figure and then at the Professor.
But even in those bloodshot eyes Ramon read something that decided him. It was very hard, and it was more dangerous so; but the Friend-man loved the other. The other must be tried for too!
Ramon unwound his long woven belt and passed it under Barton’s back. The ends he drew up under the armpits and crossed them at the back of the neck, giving one end to the Professor and keeping one himself. Then, when they pulled apart, the crossing of the belt supported Barton’s head. “Now!” cried Ramon; and pulling strongly the two dragged the heavy form along the snow to the edge of the steep slope. The Professor’s face was purple, and drops of blood beaded his finger tips.
“Let me, señor!” said the boy; and taking both ends of the belt over his shoulder, he went plunging down the declivity, Barton’s limp head bumping against his legs, and Barton’s body and heels dragging in the soft snow just enough to act as a brake. As for the Professor, he stumbled after as best he could, with vague eyes and bursting veins and treacherous legs. Sometimes he fell forward and plowed a rod in the snow, and once he was beginning toroll, but Ramon leaped and stopped him just in time.
And so at last they came to the end of the snow. The boy laid his burden upon the matted grass, with head up-hill, and piled a little drift of snow about the head. “Put it so, also, to your head,” said he, “and I will bring the mules.”
With that he was racing off down the hill in knowing zigzags, though it looked too steep for a goat.
In half an hour a very tired boy was getting two helpless men upon two almost helpless mules. Perhaps if the latter had been able to object, he could not have succeeded. But by the help of the slope, and hauling with his belt over the saddle from the down-hill side, he presently had both up. Barton’s feet he tied together under the mule, and Barton’s hands around its neck. The Professor could sit up, in a stupid way, and Ramon tied only his feet. “Hold well!” he cried loudly and sternly, but with the same little quiver in his voice; and taking both bridle reins in one hand, he plunged down the hill, his weight thrown forward upon the hard bits, so that the reluctant mules had no choice but to follow.
The only one who remembers much of that grim journey is Ramon, and as he isnot much given to talking, no one knows just what he does think of it. The Professor’s clear recollection begins with finding himself on board the train at Casapalca—a train of that most wonderful railroad in the world, the railroad above the clouds, that clambers up and burrows through the cordillera of Peru. Before that are only hazy memories of a vast mountain wall leaning over to crush him; a winding path in the air; a queer, boy’s voice, coming from nowhere, with little Spanish words of cheer. And now a round, brown face from the opposite seat was watching him seriously—even tenderly, the Professor fancied—while the burly conductor was saying:
“I never seen it come any closer! How ever the boy got you in, beats my time. And I saw he hated to leave you, so I says to him, says I, ‘Just get in, sonny, ’n’ go down to Lima with us, ’n’ I’ll fetch you back if I lose my job!’ He’s the right sort, he is! An’ you’ll be all right, as soon as you get down there—that’s the only medicine for the S’rochy.”
All right they were next day in the capital. Even Barton was able to sit up; and he nodded weakly as the Professor said to Ramon:
“My boy, I would like you to go with us. We have to travel much in Peru; and if you will accompany us you will earn good wages. And you shall be as my son. For neither of us would be alive now if we had not had a little hero with us. Will you come?”
Joy flashed over Ramon’s face. But then it faded, and tears started in his eyes as he said simply:
“You are good, Excellency! I would goanywherewith you. But in the Chin-chán is my mother, with the babies; and since father died, I must be the man, for Sancho is too young.Adios!”
And he ran out, so that they should not see him crying.
Not the elder daughter, whom all the world knows where she sits, white upon her little green patch against the hopeless desert, looking up with now and then a shiver at the white-headed giant, her father. No, the one I mean now is something like three hundred and fifty years younger than the Misti’s first born and favorite, and not white at all, nor over-dignified, nor even given to much thought as to whentaita[16]shall shrug again those mighty shoulders and rattle the walls about her ears. In fact, to look at the two—the fat, brown, clumsychologirl and the shining city—I dare say you would never take Tránsita and Arequipa[17]for sisters at all. But as both are daughters of the Misti, I see no other way out of it.
What! You don’t know either of them? Hm! Of course it could hardly be expected that you should be acquainted with Tránsita,for she lives on a back street on the other side of the river and comes very seldom to the plaza. And probably you could not talk with her, anyhow, since her speech is only Spanish and Quichua. But not to know Arequipa—why that is to count out the prettiest city in Peru, and one of the oldest in America. And if you do not know the daughter you have missed the father, too, which is an even greater pity—for he is one of the handsomest giants on earth, though a baby in his own family. Well, well—the sooner I give you an introduction the better, then.
The Misti is an inactive but living volcano, a hundred miles from the sea, in southern Peru. As I have said, it ranks small at home, being only 19,300 feet tall, while some of its brother Andes tower to 26,000 feet. But few of them are so handsome. It stands alone and erect, with head up and shoulders squared, while some of them look as if the nurse had dropped them in their babyhood and they had never got their spines straight again. It is a huge and very perfect cone, symmetrical as the sacred peak of Japan, but vastly higher. So steep is it that the thick blanket of volcanic cinders would surely slip down from its shoulders, except for the long broochesof dead lava that pin it up. As for its head, that is old with eternal snow.
For time unknown—since long before history—the Misti has been the best known mountain in Peru; and I do not much wonder. It has a nobility of its own, such as its mightier brethren do not all possess. Just to its right vast Charchani climbs 20,000 feet into the sky, and a most majestic peak it is. Just to its left towers the grand wall of Pichu-pichu, itself taller than the greatest mountain in the United States. But it is always the lone, solemn Misti, to which every one looks, of which every one speaks—with a strange mixture of love and awe. Meeting an Arequipeño abroad, you might very likely fancy there were no other mountains in sight of his home; but you will not be left long in ignorance that there is a Misti. Even before Europeans knew of America, the remarkable Indians of Peru half worshiped the Misti; and so Arequipa gets its name, an Aymará word which means “with the peak behind it.” Far up its deadly sides they toiled to make their sacrifices to Those Above; and even in the elder crater I have counted the ruins of aboriginal shrines. It is so isolated, so individual, so majestic in its awful stature; and above all, while its neighbor brothersare just mountains, it has a soul—the wondrous fire-soul of the volcano.
A stern father is the Misti. His daughter is surely not undutiful, but many a time he has punished her sorely. Many a time he has sent her sprawling in the dust, and turned her smiling whiteness to a generation of mourning. So, even as late as 1868 over half the buildings of Arequipa went down in a mortal chaos of stone, killing as many people as fall in an ordinary battle.
One might fancy that such a parent would get himself disliked; but his severity does not seem to be laid up against him. Arequipa loves the Misti—and as for Tránsita, she loved him even more than she did Arequipa. Their house faced south, but the first thing in the morning Tránsita used to climb to the stone-arched roof to look at the peak black against the rising sun; and the last thing at evening to watch the rosy west-glow upon that venerable head. And always she wondered the more, for now as she grew taller, and the untaught soul had room to swell, she saw more and more in that great dark one with his elephant-wrinkled hide and the lava scars on his white head, and now and then, of a hushed dawn, the ghost of a cloud floating plume-like from his brow. Perhaps it was because he is soincomprehensible a giant that she comprehended him—in that child way which is more at home in some mysteries than we older stupids are. At all events, she turned to him for companionship and confidences, and had a way of talking with him ever so softly, that no one else should hear.
“Now,taita,” she was whispering this morning, “hast thou heard what is to be? For they say that theTuerto, the cross-eyed, who oppressed us before, is to make new revolution, that he may be president again and rob himself still richer. And it has always been in Arequipa that they begin. Dost thou think it? And would they kill Eugénio? For he is very loyal, and is one of importance, being a corporal. Do not let them hurt my brother—wilt thou,taita?”
To all these questions and the adjuration the giant answered never a word. His face was grave with the morning shadows. To look at him no one but Tránsita would have dreamed he knew anything about it.
Nor do I really know that he did, though he had the best of opportunities. From that lookout in the sky, so overtopping the town, he could see right into the high-walled court of Don Telesfor’s mansion. It was a flat old courtyard, paved with tipsy blocks ofstone and framed four-square with long shadowy verandas of the whitesillar.[18]In the center was a long-forgotten fountain, and at the middle of each side a quaint staircase of the same white tufa ran up to the cracked and precarioussillarroof. No one was to be seen about the court. Only, along the easternportal[19]was a long ridge of fresh earth.
Don Telesfor was making repairs. A great many people in Arequipa had long been free to say that he ought to mend his ways, and the old place might certainly count as a way that should be mended. His career as prefect, years before, had been by no means free from charges of extortion and thievery, and it was notorious that he would be glad to see again in the presidential chair the unscrupulous usurper who had grown from pauper soldier to many-times millionaire in one term. For this reason Don Telesfor was as little beloved as his old patron; and poorcholos, with better love than understanding of freedom, took malicious pleasure in laying the scourge to their two backs jointly. “Look at the Cacerist!” they would growl audiblywhen Don Telesfor thundered down the reeling cobblestones on his silver trapped horse. As for his house, I fancy not one of them ever passed it after nightfall, with a bit of chalk in his pocket (and chalk is the last thing to be without in Peru during a campaign), but he stopped and scrawled in elastic Spanish upon the outer wall: “Death to the tyrant and his leeches! Down with the cross-eyed!”
But though he was unpopular in person and politics, no one thought of taking Don Telesfor very seriously. Like his patron, he had turned tail when the Chilean wolves came down on the fold; and unlike him, his caution was greater than his greed. Every one knew him for timorous. The unhappy republic was torn and pale with fear of a new usurpation; but in all the whisperings and the glances over the shoulder, Don Telesfor was quite forgotten. Since the downfall of the pretender he had been quietly cultivating his prettychacraat Yura, and now even thought to patch up the old mansion in Arequipa, long tousled and neglected since the terribletemblorof ’68. This was praiseworthy and reassuring, too. In those troublous times to think rather of beautifying and restoring the home was clearly a pledge of peace.
Sober burros, each laden with two big white blocks ofsillar, had been trudging down from the lofty quarries, and the tottering arches of the courtyard had been rebuilt. Now, Don Telesfor was hauling rich soil all the way from his plantation to make flower beds in thepatio.[20]Some felt that the soil of Arequipa ought to be good enough for any flower; but if he chose to haul dirt twelve miles instead of one, that was his lookout. So the crazy wagons creaked across the ancient stone bridge every afternoon and bumped into the courtyard, and were relieved of their mules. Don Telesfor was always on hand in person to attend to the unloading—he and his nephew, Don Beltran, and two old peons—while the drivers took their animals to theacéquia. One would have thought that loam sacred, by the care he took of it.
Just now the big gates were shut. The wagons would not be in from Yura for some time yet. Along the east side of thepatiowas the long mound of soil, paling in the hot sun; aside from that, one might have thought the place abandoned.
But if one could have peered through the heavy doors of the middle room of the north portal one would have seen Don Telesforand Don Beltran and half a dozen strangers talking low and earnestly. The windows and even the skylight were shuttered, and the one candle sent strange shadows sprawling over a formidable row of long, shallow, iron-bound boxes stained with fresh earth.
“To-morrow night, then,” said one of the strangers, laying his hand on Don Telesfor’s shoulder. “Even so it will begin in Lima on the eve of the new congress, and all is set that the revolution burst in the same hour in Truxillo, Cuzco, here and all Peru. And carrying it off well here in the south, who knows but Don Telesfor shall earn a place in the new cabinet?”
“Ójala!” sighed Don Telesfor, his mouth twitching greedily. “At all events, this end is safe. I promise you no one so much as suspects us, and with the two hundred men that will sleep here to-night hidden, we can easily put down any resistance. Theguárdiasare the only danger; for, beingcholos[21]they all worship Piérola, and it avails not the trying to buy them. The only argument with such stupids is to rap them the back of the head—and for that, thirty secure men are appointed to hide upon the beat and silence each his policeman.By midnight that should all be settled without noise, and then we will fall upon the barracks. A hundred soldiers, asleep, have nothing to say with us; and in the morning Arequipa will waken to find herself in our ranks.”
“Nothing lacks, then?”
“Nothing. All is understood. Forty rifles are still to come, but they will be here in an hour, or maybe two, for the carts move slowly.”
“And then the flower beds will be done, no?” chuckled the other with a wink.
“Aye, and ready to bloom,” answered Don Telesfor, smiling grimly at the jest.
“And, methinks, with enough thorns—ay diós!What?”
For a deep, far roar crept through the closed shutters; a Babel of howling curs and crowing cocks and the jangle of church bells. Before one could fairly turn to look at his neighbor it was as if that whole room of stone had suddenly been dropped twenty feet, as one might drop a bird cage to the floor. The heavy boxes and the standing men and the massive furniture were tossed as feathers in a gust of air. The wide stone vault overhead yawned and let in a foot of sky, and shivered as if to fall, and then as swiftly clapped its ragged teethshut again, while a great dust filled the room to choking. Then all was still as the grave, and for a few seconds nothing moved. At last the men scrambled to their feet, pale and hushed, and stood looking blankly at one another.
“Ea!But I like not your Arequipa temperament,” faltered the tallest of the strangers. “It is too impulsive. Not if you gave me three Arequipas would I dwell here!”
“Pues, it is nothing,” answered Don Telesfor, coolly. “Only in the being accustomed. Thesetembloresare fearsome, but we think little of them. To the street, when the shock comes, lest the walls thump us on the heads; and then back into the house, as if there had been nothing. As for this one, it is a good omen. El Misti gives us the hand that he is with us for an overturning.”
Tránsita, sitting upon the stone coping of her own roof, had a clearer view of the earthquake, and her opinion certainly did not coincide with that of Don Telesfor. It was a perfect day, as most days in Arequipa are, but something in the air made her nervous and ill at ease, and all the morning she had been perched up thereconfiding her fears to the great peak. Below, the street was still echoing the rumble of clumsy carts high heaped with earth. She had paid little attention to them or their clamor. Her thoughts were for Eugénio, and her anxiety about him seemed to grow. So groundlessly, too. The national unrest was everywhere, but vague and undefined. No one knew any specific cause for alarm, and she least of all. Now, if her ears had been sharp enough to hark across to that barred room a mile away, where Don Telesfor was at that very moment saying: “The only argument with such stupids is to rap them the back of the head.” And “such stupids” meant precisely Eugénio and his fellow-soldiers, the military police of the city.
Six wagons had already turned the corner toward the bridge and were out of sight. As the straggling seventh and last trundled past the house the teamster, seeing that squat figure up there, tossed at it a pebble from his load. Tránsita only shrugged her shoulder at the tap. She was too busy with her thoughts to so much as turn around. “Much care of Eugénio,” she murmured. “And if truly there be of these Cacerists here, confound them,taita!”
As she raised her eyes to the great peak a swift chill ran through her. She was sure the Misti nodded, as if he had heard her words. Surely the giant moved! Far spurts of dust rose from his shoulders, and dark masses came leaping down, and the great profile seemed to lose its sharpness. She winked hard to be sure of her eyes, and now the Misti moved no more. But from the corrals roundabout rose a bedlam; and Chopo ran out, barking frantically, and the ancient cottonwoods up by the mill suddenly bowed their heads as to a hurricane. Theacéquiabank split and the stream came panicking out. The tall wall back of Eusébio’s house was rent from top to bottom, and two-foot blocks ofsillarflew all about. The very roof on which she sat—a massive arch of stone, as are nearly all the roofs of Arequipa—went up and down as if a heavy wave had passed under it. The coping spilled into the street; and Tránsita was left clinging on the broken edge, her face hanging over. There were wild screams, and every one stood, as by magic, in the middle of the street, looking up at the tottering walls. And in the self-same breath it was all done, and no sign was left save the shattered blocks of stone, the truantacéquiaand a tall cloud of yellow dust that went bellying off toward Charchani.
Yes, one thing more. Tránsita lay bewildered a moment, and then began to look about, still without moving. Every one was going back into the houses, laughing nervously, a few children crying. In another moment the street was deserted. It was as if that thousand people had been a return-ball, to pop one instant into sight, and in another back with the recoil of the elastic. But down by the empty hovels over the way was a cart, broken across in halves. Two dazed mules were trying clumsily to right themselves with the forward end of the wreck, while the rear half was tossed up on the narrow sidewalk against the ruined walls. The load of earth had been unceremoniously dumped into the gutter, and thecholodriver, half overwhelmed by it, lay motionless along the curb.
At that, Tránsita was upon her feet at once, nor paused until she was tugging at the teamster’s arms. The dirt was heaped upon his legs, and he had fainted with the pain, and such a dead weight she could not budge. She dropped the limp shoulders and began to claw the loose earth away. In a moment the left foot was free; but as she dragged it out, the dirt slipped down andrevealed the corner of an iron-bound box resting upon the other leg. A sudden impulse led her to sweep back the soil until the end of the case was uncovered. The funny black marks there meant nothing to Tránsita—indeed, if any one had spelled out for her the “M-a-double-n-l-i-c-h-e-r,” I seriously doubt if that grewsome German name would have made her any the wiser. But if she did not know letters from ten-penny nails, and was equally ignorant of the inventions and the existence of Germany, Tránsita was no fool. For a moment her brown face looked more than usually dull. Then a slow grayness crept into it, and there was a hitch in her breath.
She looked up at the Misti appealingly, and then down at the box, staring as if fascinated. Presently the rather heavy jaw set stubbornly. She lifted the corner of the box an inch, by a violent effort, pried her shin against the sharp edge to hold it, and laboriously dragged out the imprisoned foot. Then she scraped the earth over until the box was well hidden again, and leaving the liberated but unconscious teamster where he lay, went racing down the street like one gone daft.
“This is a pretty story to bring to thecuartel, daughterling,” said Captain Yrribarri,fifteen minutes later. Corporal Eugénio had no sooner heard his sister’s breathless message than he brought her before the commanding officer, and there she had rehearsed it all, unshaken by questionings and banter. “It has to be true,” she declared, over and over, “elsemi taitaMisti never would have showed me.”
“A girl’s nonsense,” the grave officer repeated. “And still—what doanyboxes, thus hidden in loads of earth, and in these times? I mind me, now, that Don Telesfor has been hauling earth all the way from Yura these many weeks, when there is better at Carmen Alto. It is fit to be looked into, and by the saints, if thy guess is true, little one, thou shalt be corporal, or thy brother sergeant!Oyez, Eugénio! With a squad of thirty men surround Don Telesfor’s house and hold it tight that it leak not, while Pedro goes with five to verify the cart and the box. If that is nothing, they will report to you and you will return to quarters with the tongue behind the teeth; but if they shall find arms in the cart, keep the house and warn me.”
For my own part, I do not overly love the soldier-police of Arequipa, and have sometimes been angry enough to want to choke them for murdering my sleep with theirabominable midnight whistles. But after all, I am glad that they were not all knocked on the head the night after the earthquake; for in spite of their ignorance and their skin and their ear-piercing way of announcing “All’s well,” they are a kindly, honest, well meaning set, who could be much better utilized than by clubbing. And particularly Eugénio, who is a very good boy and likes to talk with me, calling me “your grace.” He has told me many interesting things, and often sent acholoto “tote” my heavy camera around. Sergeant Eugénio now, please—for Tránsita declined to be a corporal when the search revealed not only the one case of Mannlicher rifles in the dirt under the wrecked cart, but thirty cases more in Don Telesfor’s house, along with papers which left no doubt of his treason. Some fellow-conspirator must have warned him in time of the wayside accident, for though Eugénio and his men kept the house fully surrounded until a report came from the cart, when they broke in there was not a soul to be found.
None of the other plotters were known, and Don Telesfor eluded pursuit. It may or may not be true, as, I have been told, that he took asylum in Bolivia and was afterward drowned in trying to ford the Choqueyapuduring a freshet; but, at all events, he never came back to revive his nipped revolution.
As for Tránsita, you might just as well try to tell her that the Misti is not there at all as that “He” did not specially and intentionally interpose to save the peace of his daughters and the head of Eugénio. I half believe her brother is secretly of the same opinion, for the superstition of the peak is very strong in Arequipa; though he shrugs his shoulders in a deprecatory way when put the direct question, and says evasively:
“Pues, who knows? So the women declare. For me it is enough that he did it, and in time, the same as if he knew.”